Opinion | Why Renaming More Kolkata Roads And Parks Is Long Overdue

People such as Mohammed Ali and Ameer Ali had very tenuous links to the city, so why should anything be named after them?

As if the needless controversy over the renaming of Suhrawardy Avenue as Gopal Mukherjee Road in Kolkata was not enough, now there is another one over Mohammed Ali Park becoming Mahabali Park – or any other name. It is almost as if the chatterati believe they have a veto over any move by the new dispensation in West Bengal. That the government has changed is trauma enough for them; they want nothing else to be altered, even if these are long overdue.

Yes, changing names is long overdue. Some of the most iconic spots in Kolkata are still burdened with names that never deserved to be there. These were given at a time when the British rulers were nudging the possibly naïve (presumably well-meaning) worthies in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, including the “natives", to bolster the narrative of a major Muslim contribution to a city that was 75 per cent Hindu, in the first few decades of the 20th century.

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Hence, a road originally named after a Governor of Bengal, Henry Vansittart, was renamed Suhrawardy Avenue in 1933. And a green expanse sitting atop a vast brick reservoir originally named after another Governor of Bengal, Sir Frederick Halliday—who had hugely contributed to Calcutta’s improvement and had collaborated........

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